The programme involves specialists in childhood autism videoing interactions between parents and their children over the course of a year. They then analyse this interplay before advising parents on ways in which they can tweak their communication skills to better respond to the child’s needs and hidden cues.

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Before the PACT programme, Frank was a child of very few words. Now 10 years old, he attends a mainstream school with special provision for pupils with autism. He converses much more readily, says Louisa.

Incredibly revealing

She is full of praise for the PACT approach, not least because of its warmth and lack of intrusiveness, compared with, say, the intensive, goal-oriented Applied Behaviour Therapy, which is based on rewarding children for reaching behavioural targets.

“Once you get over the initial embarrassment of seeing yourself on video, it’s incredibly revealing and very illuminating in a constructive way,” she says. “Also, the therapists were very good at asking questions.”

After replaying, discussing and analysing various aspects of Louisa and Frank’s interactions – sometimes in slow motion – tiny but crucial details would emerge of hitherto unrecognised cues and signals. “Sometimes, you’d see that if you waited to respond to him, you missed the moment,” says Louisa. “The programme teaches you how to judge the mood and levels of responsiveness of your child, then how to alter the way you communicate, until it becomes second nature,” she says.

Adapt to the child

One of the key stressors for many children with autism is feeling pressurised into doing or saying things, and the programme teaches parents to better navigate those situations. “You create a space where you’re together and there’s no pressure on the child to communicate, as the thing with autism is that you can’t force anything,” says Louisa.

For example, Frank likes to watch the street lights come on one by one. Through the PACT programme, Louisa learned how to treat this situation differently. Instead of asking “Which lamp post will come on next?” – a question that challenged Frank – she would say “It’s gone on”, which is unthreatening and neutral, but provides communication. “The phrase would finally come back to you from him, and you’d know he’d got it, he really understood it,” she says.

Louisa recommends the approach to other families. “It’s very achievable because it’s so natural,” she says. “This is wholly about working with who your child is, and what makes them tick. It requires no particular intellect, and was only an extension of what my instincts were anyway.”